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> A third idea is that they weren't objects at all. Palomar Observatory isn't too far from the New Mexico deserts where nuclear weapons testing occurred. Radioa
by hotnfresh 3y ago
> A third idea is that they weren't objects at all. Palomar Observatory isn't too far from the New Mexico deserts where nuclear weapons testing occurred. Radioactive dust from the tests could have contaminated the photographic plates, creating bright spots on some images and not others. Given similar vanishings seen on other photographic plates of the 1950s, this seems quite possible.
- neilv 3y agoThey really buried the "duh" in the article, after random people like me, who know nothing about astronomy, were entertaining ideas more like a Dyson sphere.
- hotnfresh 3y agoI guess "extra 'stars' on 1950s astronomy-related photographic plates probably just radioactive pollution" wouldn't get clicks.
- thegrim33 3y agoWell the first paragraph of the article clearly states they disappeared somewhere within a 1 hour window, so a Dyson sphere being constructed in less than 1 hour isn't really a possibility.
- bell-cot 3y ago> a Dyson sphere being constructed in less than 1 hour isn't really a possibility. Sounds like someone needs to switch to fixed-price contracting for the Final Positioning and Assembly part of the job. Cost-plus for large but routine astrostructural projects is just begging for foot-draggers, expense-padders, and goldbrickers.
- takinola 3y agoTheoretically, the entire sphere does not need to be constructed in an hour. They just need to put in place the piece that blocks the light we see. Depending on how far away the star is, the speed of placing this block in place could be doable (at least within the context of a society sufficiently advanced to build a Dyson sphere in the first place)
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoSaturns rings?